Herbert Spencer Zim (July 12, 1909 – December 5, 1994) was a naturalist, author, editor and educator best known as the founder (1945) and editor-in-chief of the Golden Guides series of nature books.

Biography

Zim was born 1909 in New York City, but spent his childhood years in southern California. At the age of fourteen he returned to the east. He took his degrees (B.S. biologia, M.S. biologia, Ph.D. botanica) at Columbia University. Zim wrote or edited more than one hundred books on science, and in a thirty-year career teaching in the

public schools Public school may refer to: *State school (known as a public school in many countries), a no-fee school, publicly funded and operated by the government *Public school (United Kingdom), certain elite fee-charging independent schools in England and ...

introduced laboratory instruction into elementary school science. He is best known as the founder in 1945 (and, for twenty-five years, editor in chief) of the Golden Guides, pocket-size introductions for children to such subjects as

fossils A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved in ...

, zoology,

microscopy Microscopy is the technical field of using microscopes to view objects and areas of objects that cannot be seen with the naked eye (objects that are not within the resolution range of the normal eye). There are three well-known branches of micr ...

rocks In geology, rock (or stone) is any naturally occurring solid mass or aggregate of minerals or mineraloid matter. It is categorized by the minerals included, its chemical composition, and the way in which it is formed. Rocks form the Earth's ...

and minerals, trees, wildflowers, dinosaurs, navigation and more. He was the sole or co-author for many of the books, which were valued for their clarity, accuracy and attractive presentation—helped by the illustrations of James Gordon Irving and Zim's friend

Raymond Perlman Raymond is a male given name. It was borrowed into English from French (older French spellings were Reimund and Raimund, whereas the modern English and French spellings are identical). It originated as the Germanic ᚱᚨᚷᛁᚾᛗᚢᚾᛞ ( ...

. He moved to Florida with his wife, the anthropologist Sonia (Sonnie) Bleeker, and continued to work on the Golden Guides series until

Alzheimer's disease Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegeneration, neurodegenerative disease that usually starts slowly and progressively worsens. It is the cause of 60–70% of cases of dementia. The most common early symptom is difficulty in short-term me ...

forced him to slow down in the 1990s. He died in 1994 at Plantation Key, survived by his second wife, Grace Showe, and two sons.

References

External links

The Herbert S. Zim papers at the de Grummond Children's Literature Collection, The University of Southern MississippiGuide to the Herbert Zim papers at the University of Oregon.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Zim, Herbert 1909 births 1994 deaths 20th-century American educators American science writers American print editors Columbia College (New York) alumni Recreational cryptographers 20th-century American non-fiction writers Columbia Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni

Biography

See also

References

External links